Since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been more than 5.4 million reported cases of coronavirus in the United States. However, that is only what has been reported. Under-reporting and undertaking has been a major concern during the course of the pandemic, and it can only get worse. In fact, one doctor is growing worried about two severe heat states that have receded during testing and seems to miss many cases of coronavirus: Florida, Texas.
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“It’s really concerning, because tests are kind of the first step to finding out how much disease there is in a community,” Ashish Jha, MD, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in an interview with NPR. “If you can not vaccinate people, you do not really know how much disease there is [or] how much illness you miss. And right now, I’m worried we’ll miss a lot of cases in Texas and Florida and other states. “
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On female, female doctor holding protective suit and showing covid-19 tube test and sampling swab.
According to John Hopkins University, Florida’s test rate is declining, with the state only about 1.6 tests per 1,000 inhabitants. And Texas only does 2.0 tests per 1,000. In comparison, New York does about 4.1 tests per 1,000 people and Massachusetts does about 2.7 tests per 1,000 people. What’s even more surprising is that Florida and Texas have both reported more than 40,000 new cases of coronavirus in the last seven days. New York and Massachusetts, on the other hand, have both seen less than 4,000 in the same period, The New York Times reports.
Jha says that there are a whole set of factors that are driving this decline in testing for these two states – neither of them suggests that it is because fewer people are getting sick.
“We have all seen the stories about the very long delays,” says Jha, referring to some instances where it took a minimum of 10 days to receive results. “People are less willing to get a test if they are not going to get a result soon.” He also noted the long wait times as a clue to reviving the initiative. “I think the obstacles we have placed in making testing simple and easy elude many people to test,” he told NPR.
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According to a recent report by CNBC and Dynata, nearly 40 percent of tests return late to make a difference. Results should be returned in less than 48 hours and if they are returned more than 72 hours after the test happened, they are “near useless,” Jha said in an earlier interview with CNBC.
For example, if you test negative and your test results take 10 days to return, you may have gotten the coronavirus in that amount of time. Or, if you test positive, you would not be quarantined these 10 days, which can easily lead to more secondary infections.
That said, Jha emphasizes two things in Florida, Texas, and states where a similar problem is: more testing and faster results. There is a “broad consensus in the public health community that we need many millions of tests per day,” he says. According to John Hopkins, that is simply not the case. The data show that the US still has to manage more than a million tests in one day. And for more on this key factor of fighting coronavirus, check if you live here, you should get tested for COVID every 2 days, says study.
Video: Fauci: US coronavirus outbreak could top 100,000 new cases daily (CNBC)
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